What they are is a shady government under investigation by the RCMP. That’s what they are, and we won’t forget it.

Speaker, we now know that the Premier has been secretly planning to pave over a portion of Lake Ontario for more than three years. He pushed for a secret deal to hand over public land to a private luxury spa operator for 95 years—95 years. Who does that? Then he changed environmental and integrity laws just to force through his personal vanity project. If that doesn’t smell bad, I don’t know what does.

To the Premier: What are the real plans for Ontario Place, and which of the Premier’s insider friends are set to benefit?

Interjections.

It’s shady.

The NDP believes that these facts constitute a troubling pattern of behaviour by this government and a pervasive disregard for record-keeping and transparency, and possibly attempts to avoid public scrutiny.

That’s why, in the official opposition’s continued efforts to restore order, trust and accountability, we have also written to the Information and Privacy Commissioner, as well as to the secretary of cabinet, the head of Ontario Public Service, asking both offices to recover and retain all records pertaining to this government’s changes to the greenbelt. I will note that that secretary of the cabinet, the head of the Ontario Public Service—that person’s priority seems to be to trace who actually spilled the beans on the mandate letter; not securing the servers, which I think is shameful, actually.

Today, I want to make one thing very, very clear: The NDP—we on this side of the House—will continue to use every single legislative tool to get to the bottom of what happened with the greenbelt. We will not stop. We will not stop because an apology from the Premier is not enough. For nearly one year, this government was busy cutting their close friends—those land speculators—backroom deals, and since getting caught, they’ve been so busy with damage control from these never-ending scandals that they’ve lost total sight of their responsibility to Ontarians.

Let’s get it straight; as I mentioned at the start of this, Ontarians are going through a very, very hard time. They are lining up at food banks in record numbers. They are struggling to stretch their paycheques until the end of the month. They are worried that homelessness is around the corner. And right now, during so much financial hardship and uncertainty—and let’s remember, as well, things are not better after five years of this government; they are far more difficult today for people in this province. Maybe not for the land speculators who donate to the Conservative Party, but for real Ontarians, things are tougher today. The last thing that the people of this province need is a government that is unstable, a government that is refusing to be transparent with them and that is refusing to be truly accountable to them and to be responsive to them.

A select committee will help Ontarians get the answers and the transparency that they are looking for. I want to remind the government again: A prior select committee helped uncover misconduct in the former Liberal government’s gas plant scandal. That led to the former Premier’s chief of staff being sentenced to four months in jail. The creation of that select committee was supported by MPPs of all parties. Why not now? I heard the member opposite, the member from Nepean, say, “But that was a minority government—special circumstances.” I just want to point out that I think these are special circumstances. We have the worst political scandal in this province’s history, I would argue—unprecedented. Now is the time. A select committee is another tool that we, in the Ontario official opposition, NDP, are going to use to bring trust and accountability to government.

I would deeply urge and strongly suggest to the government that they co-operate today and pass this motion.